COLUMN RIGHT/ STEVEN M. STOLARZ : On Battlefield, Biology Should Equal Destiny : If women are to be in combat, they should face the same standards--and risks--as men.

Suppose, for just a short moment, that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. armed forces issued the following proclamation:

“Effective immediately, all military members of Caucasian descent will no longer be required to serve in what are considered to be combat units of the U.S. military, but rather will be allowed to choose whether they would like to be attached to such a unit. Members of other ethnic groups will continue to be attached to combat units as needed, regardless of the individual’s preference.”

Merely considering such a proclamation is enough to make any rational being cringe. Yet a similar policy is under consideration by the Pentagon leadership, which is under heavy political pressure to quickly adopt it. Sex rather than race, however, is to be the factor determining who may choose a career path and who must continue to have it dictated.

Meanwhile, the Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces recommended last week that women be assigned to combat under certain circumstances, though not to direct fighting on land; that they not be allowed to volunteer for front-line duty unless men are also given that option, and that there be different strength and endurance requirements for women in basic training. The non-binding recommendations now are up to the President.

In this, the Year of the Woman, the push to elevate women to the status of cannon fodder is gaining momentum. Allowing women to choose whether to go into combat would attempt to solve the problem of discrimination against women in the military by replacing it with discrimination against men. In addition, the thought of admitting women to combat units without significantly altering the military’s standards regarding women mocks the concept of equal opportunity.

Take physical endurance, for example. Despite the ascendancy of high-tech weaponry on the modern battlefield, warfare is still a test of soldiers’ physical and mental stamina. It has also been proved that an individual’s mental endurance is directly linked to his or her physical well-being.

Currently, however, physical standards for women require them to achieve a fraction of what their male counterparts are expected to complete. The Marine Corps requires men to run three miles to complete their physical fitness test, for instance, while women need to run only half that. To argue that this simply reflects the physiological differences between the sexes merely reinforces the reasoning behind barring women from combat in the first place: Women are generally not as physically strong as men.

Another issue is pregnancy. Current military policy dictates that a pregnant woman is non-deployable. The recent Persian Gulf conflict showed that pregnancies among deployed women can occur at a significant rate. While the loss of women in rear units may be a nuisance, the loss of key, trained personnel in a front-line unit could be disastrous. The idea of family leave may work in the civilian world, but until Ready-Temp starts supplying trained tank drivers and machine-gunners, it could doom a combat unit.

In addition, should the career path of a woman assigned to a combat unit suddenly intersect with the front lines of a shooting war, she would have the ability to opt for pregnancy, without penalty, rather than run the risk of death or injury in battle. No such escape exists for men. Can this be considered equal opportunity?

If women are to be admitted to combat units, the U.S. military must institute three key changes. First, sex should be entirely removed as an issue in determining assignments. Any woman entering the military should know that she might be assigned to a combat unit, just as any man might be.

Second, physical fitness standards should be the same for men and women. The enemy on the battlefield will not treat the sexes differently; they should not be treated differently in training.

Finally, and probably most difficult, regulations should strongly discourage pregnancy, particularly among women assigned to combat units. With the wide array of contraceptives available today, “accidental” pregnancies are, if not actually intentional, often the result of negligence, and should be regarded as such.

Until women in the military are treated equally, they will never be accepted as equals. Opportunity goes hand in hand with performance and responsibility throughout every other facet of the military. It must also be so in considering the admission of women into combat units.